Wednesday, May 28, 2008

We are just back from a two week trip to Portland. I haven’t had a long vacation in quite a few years, having changed jobs (most companies don’t give you vacation in the first year working) and moved up here. B has been making periodic trips to Portland to see E and daughter, and wanted me to go up as well. We ended up with too much stuff to take as checked baggage on a plane, so we decided to drive up. We took a route that we’ve never been on before, due north from Vegas on highway 93 to Idaho and then turned left due west to Portland. It was 1,100 miles one way, necessitating an overnight stay in Twin Falls, making us very happy that we could plug the Ipod into the car music system. But it did result in many photographs to use in future posts.

In coming back to work it seems that nothing has changed. I noticed something new before I even got into the building – a line of police cars parked on the sidewalk at the corner of Koval. Then I realized that we are setting up for the big jewelry show, which is proceeded by an advanced segment of really expensive stuff up in the tower suites of the big hotel next door. The big halls will open on Friday; with over 70,000 people expected, it seems a little larger this year than last. The show isn’t open to the public, those are just jewelry store owners and salesmen. Imagine taking one of those jewelry stores from the big mall you go to, putting everything into a 10x10 foot booth, and then having over three thousand of those booths. This is just for the small stuff, the really expensive items are up in the convention rooms next door, and the really really fancy stuff in the hotel tower suites.

Which leads us to today’s travel oriented videos. I heard on the news this morning that Nepal had voted on eliminating the monarchy and converting to a democracy, which led me to start singing a song that was big a long time ago (well, for me anyway). Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band:

It made me want to travel to Katmandu, or at least sing about it. Another city that seemed magical at the same time was also exotic to me, growing up in New Jersey. Crosby, Stills and Nash (without Young):

Makes me really regret not hitting Woodstock (yes, I am that old). One of the small towns we drove through was McGill, which brought another song to mind. The Beatles had recorded Rocky Racoon which has a line about McGill, so I was looking on YouTube for a clip of a Flip Wilson sketch I remember that had Flip acting out the song. Sorry, couldn’t find it, but a search brought up a lot of segments from his tv show, including this one. Mr. J is in the news here this morning, meeting over at Trump’s, with further rumors of an upcoming show. He is living in Vegas now, and periodically seen around town.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Just a few random pictures from around my work today. I’ve got some longer posts, but need the time to pull them together.A few months ago one of the major car manufacturers had a big meeting for their west coast dealers, and unveiled a few new cars. This is what one of our halls was set up like for that offering:

I haven’t seen too many theater type setups like this. It takes a lot of work to put all of those risers in. Udge asked about our canals, in a recent post I had a photo at the lagoon out front. Here is what the canal extension into the new area looked like.And the old portion, by the turn around

That’s up on the second floor, above the casino and restaurant area. Nice sky.When B flew up to Portland a while back she snapped a picture from the plane window. For those of you that haven’t flown into Las Vegas in a while, this is what the strip and downtown now look like.

The cluster of tall buildings to the left around the white shaft is the north end of the Strip, the tall white thing is the Stratosphere. A little to the right is the grouping of buildings downtown on Fremont Street. This is above the airport looking northwest. We have about 1,600,000 people now, growing at around 10,000 new arrivals per year.

OK, ok, since I have been remiss in posting these, here is a shot of our little angel asleep in the car.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Today’s videos are in honor of Dana and her return from a furious vacation up in the remote woodland of the wherever the heck it was she went. I can see from her photos there was a lot of water and green, which in no way remotely looks like the Las Vegas area.The first is of Ninja cats – pretty good at what they do but not very stealthy. Need some background music, maybe the theme from Mission Impossible or the Avengers.

And some dancing cats. What is more amazing than the synchronization is the keeping of that many kittens together without a riot starting up. Looks like the Siamese up front can’t wait though

And one for me, I remember projects like that; estimate five guys for three months and told to do it myself in two weeks, in a basement office with no windows. Only I never got a hat.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

A few weeks ago I was walking towards our lobby from my underground office. Looking down the hall it looked like somebody had torn a hole in the far lobby wall and put in a big window. My eye’s aren’t that good, but it sure looked like the western mountains and the sky.

This was about 150 meters away, and the closer I got the better it looked, until I made it almost up there and found out it was a set of new video projectors being set up to display advertising. Guess they were using the mountain view for testing. It still looked pretty good, even if you can’t see it very well in the small picture.This is what it looks like outside driving home, heading west on Twain.

And wandering around on our lunchtime walk we came across this scene out by the front lagoon. I guess the weather is nice enough for all of the photo work to be outside. I think that I see a bride and groom on about 10% of my wanderings around the Strip. Doesn’t matter where we’ve been, what casino or shopping center, there has been a pair about everywhere. Usually I don’t have my camera to document it, but I have put up some past photo posts.

And a bonus video for you. When flipping through our local newspaper I usually pass by the obituaries, sometimes there is a big story about someone famous that has died. A few days ago there were two names that were familiar to me. The first was Irvine Robbins. It’s a name that is not usually recognized out of context, but with his brother in law he founded the Baskin-Robbins ice cream chain. Looks like his was the first company that started out franchising stores, when he was just starting out and wanted to expand, he sold his original eight stores to the managers and started up the concept. Mr. Robbins was 90 years old. Another name also listed was Ted Key. The headline put him as the creator of ‘Hazel’, an old comic and later sitcom that I remember from long ago. But I remember him better for something else he came up with, for one of my all time favorite shows:

Sunday, May 04, 2008

June, add 10, July, add 10 more, end of July, add 10 more. But this time of year is beautiful. Flowers in bloom filling the air with sweet scents, clear blue sky, sit outside in the warm breeze and smell the hamburgers grilling all over the valley. We have a cover on our pool and the water temp is up to 80, so swimming season starts in my yard. But I like it better next month, by Memorial Day the water temp will be up in the mid 90's, when I consider it perfect.

Friday, May 02, 2008

In following the tradition of Clare we return again to E Friday, where I post photos of my darling granddaughter E, because VG really likes to look at these pics. Well, I like to look at them also.

Somebody recently had a post about ankle biters. Her story was about friendly children, but my picture of ankle biters is a little different. We have two of them living at our house, and the worst culprit is Max. After all, an ankle is about all he can reach. But he is also the house supervisor, and usually has to stick his nose into whatever is going on.

Just to make sure everything is being done correctly.

Oh, don’t have three with E and Max in them. Would you settle for E and a squishy fish with a blue hat? Yes, that’s her dinosaur pajamas and morning hair.